We’re thrilled to announce the next fellows for our Writer’s Residency in Downtown Las Vegas. We welcome our fellows Esther Tsvayg, Marian Whitaker, and Gregor Langen.
Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment next to Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.
Our apartment is in The Lucy, which also houses the Writer's Block. The Lucy is Beverly Rogers’ multi-use artist residency and complex, dedicated to fostering a creative community in Las Vegas.
Special thanks again to Nevada Humanities, UNLV, and private donors for helping bring our fellowships to life.
Esther Tsvayg - ApriL 2023
Esther is a queer, Russian + Jewish multi-media storyteller born and raised in Brooklyn and based out of Los Angeles. She is a filmmaker, published historian, accredited fact checker, and has served in roles both in guaranteed income and as a research assistant for an acclaimed, best-selling fantasy novelist with a Paramount Pictures deal.
About her project: I will be working on a script about a dysfunctional, working class immigrant family that unravels during the observance of two major events— the oldest daughter marrying into a wealthy, educated family and the graduation of the youngest daughter from a prestigious university.
Marian Whitaker - May 2023
Marian recently graduated UCLA with an MFA in Screenwriting and currently works in production at Jimmy Kimmel Live. She has won grants for past writing projects, placed as a Semi-Finalist in the 2022 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards thriller genre, and currently aims to revise a novel manuscript she first wrote out while living out of a van in Australia.
About her project: I have a complete manuscript for a chick-lit mystery novel similar to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I have two mentors (authors experienced in the genre) who helped me develop a revision plan and offered to introduce me to agents once I revise the manuscript.
Currently, I live in LA with my partner and three cats. I also possess a vibrant (but distracting) social life. I believe the opportunity to work on my manuscript in a separate space for a couple weeks would be extremely productive.
gregor langen - May 2023
Gregor Langen is a writer from the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota's MFA program, where he was awarded the Winifred Fellowship for Fiction. He lives in Saint Paul with his wife, the SF writer Sophie Wereley.
About his project: While in LV, I will be working furiously to finalize a third draft of my novel, tentatively titled VASELINE. Below is a short tag:
VASELINE is a dark comic novel that follows eleven-year-old Danny von Lawton and her sixty-seven-year-old ‘grandmamom’ over the course of one peewee hockey season. Set in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, the novel’s central question concerns the shifting relationship between Danny and her grandmamom, and the old woman’s progressively fanatic belief that her Danny is a “conduit to God.” When a gruesome sports injury prompts Grandmamom to confront Danny with the “truth” of her prophetic powers, Danny must find a way to manifest God’s glory on Earth, or leave her grandmamom, her hockey team, and her small-town community to ruin.